Writing can come in fits and starts, but I am full of words, every day, all day.
“My God, it’s full of stars.”
My God, I’m full of words.
It’s only that I don’t always write them down, but when I do … catharsis.
The dance of the pen across the page is a deer prancing in the snow, kids racing through the grass, a performance car zipping across the flats so fast the videographer struggles to keep the machine in the frame.
When it works, the words flow like water.
When it doesn’t, the words drip – drip – drip –
and then stop.
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This is the title entry from my book Full: Rockets, Bells & Poetry, available wherever fine books are sold — have your bookseller order ISBN 978-1-7373499-0-7
When Summer was a puppy and stairs were a strange and mysterious mystery, I would hook her up to a leash and take her out front to do her doggie business rather than force her to negotiate the 10 steps down from the deck to our fenced-in backyard.
Now closer to her fourth birthday than her third, she has long ago grown accustomed to stairs, but after numerous bouts of hesitation at the patio door, I finally realized that first thing in the morning, she prefers to harken back to her puppyhood and go out front.
Since I am still at least 30 pounds heavier than I would consider my ideal weight, in recent months I have capitulated to my goofy dog’s preference and taken her on a 10- to 15-minute walk up and down the road and/or through the big field next to the house. (Summer, Dejah and I live on a little more than three acres of land not far from the beautiful shores of Green Bay — the body of water where the city gets its name.)
Saturday morning, after my usual morning surf through comic strips, familiar blogs and word games, I dabbled briefly on social media and even stuck my toe into the debate du jour involving heads of state. That’s a little unusual given that I ultimately view our present crisis as the state versus the individual, rather than any state-versus-state or party-versus-party.
Be that as it may, people took sides and expressed their anger and dismay at whichever head of state they viewed as being mainly at fault. At that point Summer expressed her dismay that we had not gone for our walk yet, so I pocketed the phone and grabbed the leash.
It was a cold but beautiful sunny morning. Sunny days help my depth perception — you may recall the story of when I first got glasses, the doctor added a prism that forced my two eyes to work better together — and so I stopped a time or two just to enjoy the sights of clouds racing across the sky, our three willow trees and the house standing behind them, and the bay peeking through the woods. (For three seasons, you can’t see the water from here because of the greenery.)
Summer paused mid-walk and sat down in the field, and I stood next to her and thanked God for a life that has lasted 72 years (as of later this month) and brought me to this beautiful corner of the universe. Eventually I coaxed her to continue and we headed back to the house.
I pulled out my phone again and considered leaping back into the fray, but I was pulled up short by a meme a friend had posted. It was a photo of a sunny woods with a river running through it, and these words:
“If you want evidence that the world is a terrible place, watch the news and surf the web. But if you want to remember how incredible this planet is, go out into nature. Unlike social media and the news, nature has no incentive to keep us agitated, angry and anxious.”
I reposted the meme and got on with my day, making a point to look out my window and up at the sky as often as possible.
It was a good day.
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March 2, 2025 — This post is also collected in my book See the World! Ask your favorite bookseller to order ISBN number 978-0-9910107-1-4
Frankly, I didn’t want to join the chorus commemorating the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. of A. on this date back in 2001. I was an editor for the late lamented Green Bay News-Chronicle that day, and I have my share of memories, as do all of us who lived through that day. This weekend brings the 25th anniversary of my first prescription for high blood pressure, a condition we discovered after I got worried about the chest pains I experienced while working on the Sept. 13 edition of the News-Chronicle. We had produced an Extra on Tuesday afternoon, the regular Wednesday morning paper, and it was time to consider what was going into Thursday’s paper when my internal alarms went off.
I have very strong opinions about the difference between the U.S. of A. of 2001 and where it stands today, and very mixed opinions about whether I want to go there in this space, and so I decided to peruse the archives to see what I was writing around the 20th anniversary back in 2021.
Surprise! Not a whisper. Instead I was focused on finishing a novel that I had been tinkering with for two or three years already. Enough was enough, and so I set myself a deadline to see if — after decades of meeting deadlines successfully in my news-gathering career — it would help to set a deadline in my novel writing. Spoiler alert: The novel is still not finished. Mind you, I have finished seven other books in the meantime, just not that one.
We also were focused on the newest member of our little clan. Summer had been born around July 20, we picked her out on Aug. 29, and she met Dejah and our cat Blackberry on Sept. 11. Those were sweet times.
The closest I came to addressing the historic date was three days later, and then it was only as I promoted a new edition of my first book of essays from 2010, Refuse to be Afraid. I concluded, “These are scary people who want us to be terrified. We used to call people like that terrorists; I still do … We need to overcome the fear and live in freedom. Otherwise, the terrorists have won.”
And I would add that it’s essential to love God and love our neighbors, remembering that we are 8 billion or so neighbors sharing this little orb in space.
